Rewrite My Heart

Chapter 1: The Wrong Address

The notification arrived at precisely 8:02 a.m., which was already suspicious.

Clara hated imprecision. She hated it the way some people hated the sound of chewing or the smell of burnt coffee. Imprecision suggested laziness. Sloppiness. The kind of thinking that led to historical plaques claiming Napoleon was short or medieval people believed the Earth was flat, both of which were egregiously incorrect and personally offensive.

SoulPrint, allegedly the most advanced matchmaking app on the market, had now failed her four times.

Her phone chimed once. Polite. Cheerful. Smug.

Congratulations, Clara! Your SoulPrint Match has been found.
Location: 114 Ashbury Lane
Time: Now

Clara stared at the screen, then slowly lowered the phone onto her desk like it might explode if startled.

"114 Ashbury Lane," she said aloud to her empty office, tasting the words. "Does not exist."

Not doesn't exist anymore. Not was renamed. Not demolished in 1973 due to poor city planning and worse plumbing.

Did not exist. Ever.

She knew because she had checked. Thoroughly. Painstakingly. With maps spread across three centuries, city planning documents, handwritten tax records, and a microfilm machine that smelled faintly of dust and regret. Ashbury Lane ended at number 108. It always had. Even before it was called Ashbury Lane. Even when it was a dirt path used primarily by goats and one extremely determined midwife.

Clara exhaled through her nose and reached for her notebook.

The notebook was leather-bound, meticulously indexed, and labeled on the spine in neat handwriting:
SoulPrint Errors & Anomalies, Vol. I

She opened to a fresh page.

Entry #4
Date: Tuesday
Time: 08:02
Address Given: 114 Ashbury Lane
Historical Status: Nonexistent
Notes: Again.

She paused, then added, almost begrudgingly:

Curiosity level: Increasing.

Clara liked facts. She trusted records. She believed the past, while often misinterpreted, was at least fixed. Events happened or they didn't. Buildings stood or they didn't. People lived, died, wrote letters, paid taxes, complained about neighbors, and left behind a trail of evidence that could be followed if one was patient enough.

Apps, on the other hand, were chaos in a glass rectangle.

She had downloaded SoulPrint six months ago during a moment of weakness. Specifically, during a departmental mixer where Professor Alden had smiled at her with pity and said, "You know, Clara, there's an app now. It uses algorithms."

Algorithms, as a concept, intrigued her. Romance, less so.

SoulPrint claimed to analyse search history, digital footprints, behavioural patterns. It promised compatibility beyond hobbies and zodiac signs. It promised efficiency.

Her first notification had sent her to a closed-down post office that had burned down in 1956.

The second had directed her to a café that did not exist. Not now. Not in the past. It just wasn't there. 

The third had simply said: Wrong time. Try again soon! which felt less like an error message and more like a threat.

She stood, slipping her coat on with automatic precision, because despite herself, she was going to check again.

Outside, the city moved with its usual indifference. Cars honked. Someone argued loudly into a phone. A busker played a violin with more enthusiasm than skill. Clara walked the route she knew by heart, steps aligning unconsciously with the grid of streets she'd memorised years ago.

Ashbury Lane greeted her the same way it always did: quietly, unbothered, stubbornly finite.

108. A brick townhouse with ivy creeping up its side.

Then nothing.

A narrow gap. A utility box. A tree that had no business being there according to the city's own landscaping permits.

Clara stood exactly where 114 should have been.

Her phone buzzed again.

She looked down, heart ticking faster despite herself.

SoulPrint Update
You're close.

Close to what, exactly, Clara wanted to ask. A temporal hallucination? A software bug with commitment issues? A soulmate hiding behind municipal inaccuracies?

She glanced around. Nothing unusual. No shimmering portals. No dramatic strangers with windswept hair and tragic expressions. Just the street, the tree, and a faint sense of being... observed.

She shivered, annoyed at herself.

"This is ridiculous," she muttered, snapping a photo of the spot for documentation. "There is no address here. There never was."

Across time, someone smiled.

They leaned against a wall that did not exist yet, boots scuffed, coat flickering between styles that belonged to no single decade. Their wrist device hummed softly, projecting layers of data that overlapped like ghostly maps.

Still early, Alex thought.

Clara was right on schedule. Meticulous as ever. Hair pulled back, notebook tucked under one arm, irritation radiating off her like static. Alex had seen her like this before. Many times. Sometimes in different coats. Once with a truly unfortunate scarf phase.

"Four notifications," Alex murmured. "Personal best."

The device on their wrist flickered again. A warning pulse. Temporal drift within acceptable limits. SoulPrint's signature anomaly glowed faintly, tethered stubbornly to one woman standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Or the right place. Just... wrong when.

Alex watched as Clara frowned at her phone, then at the street, then wrote something down with sharp, annoyed strokes. That notebook always came out eventually. It was comforting, in a way. Proof that no matter how many timelines bent, some things stayed constant.

Alex straightened, fingers brushing the edge of a jump point that shimmered like heat haze.

"Not yet," they said quietly, more to themselves than to the universe. "You're not ready."

Or maybe I'm not, they added, wry.

Clara slipped her phone into her pocket with a huff and turned away, already constructing a hypothesis, already planning her next steps. Alex let the moment stretch, memorising it. The way she walked. The way she squared her shoulders, as if daring reality to argue with her.

Soon, they promised silently.

Very soon.

Behind Clara, the air flickered for half a second. A ripple, unnoticed. The tree's shadow bent the wrong way, then corrected itself.

Clara paused.

She turned, heart giving an inexplicable lurch.

Nothing.

Just Ashbury Lane. Ending where it always had.

She shook her head, annoyed at herself for feeling unsettled, and headed back toward the library, notebook already filling with questions.

Above her phone screen, unseen, SoulPrint updated quietly.

Status: Match confirmed
Error: Temporal mismatch
Correction: In progress